Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ (29 page)
Read Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
5
.
Uncle John took us out to an exclusive nightclub, and wouldn’t you know it—Ol’ Jaybeard was the doorman. “You can’t come in unless you know the password!” he barked. Then a man walked up to the door and Jaybeard said, “12.” The man replied, “6,” and Jaybeard let him in. Then a woman walked up and Jaybeard said, “6.” The woman replied, “3,” and was let in. Brian exclaimed, “This is easy!” and stepped up to the entrance. Ol’ Jaybeard said, “8.” Brian replied, “4.” Ol’ Jaybeard yelled, “Wrong! Now go away!” While we were driving back home to the BRI, Uncle John figured out what Brian should have said. What was it?
Blood is about three times thicker than water.
6
.
“As I was speeding through Flushing,” recalled Ol’ Jaybeard, “the streetlights went out! And my headlights weren’t on! And there was no moon in the sky! Suddenly a lady dressed all in black stepped out into the road right in front of me, but I saw her just in time to stop! How?”
7
.
“I’m thinking of a four-digit number,” said Ol’ Jaybeard to Brian. “The first digit is one-seventh of the last digit. The second digit is six times the first digit, and the third digit is the second digit plus two. What is the number?” Brian replied, “Uhh…” Ol’ Jaybeard reassured him, “You don’t have to be a math whiz to get this.” What’s the number?
8
.
“I placed a $50 bill between pages 57 and 58 of that
Bathroom Reader,
” said Ol’Jaybeard. “The first one of you to get it can keep it.” Everyone lunged for the book, except Brian, who remained in his chair. Ol’ Jaybeard snarled, “What, are you too good for my money?” “No,” said Brian. “I just know that you’re lying.” How’d he know?
9
.
Ol’ Jaybeard burst into the BRI during a winter storm. “Man, it’s really coming down out there, but this stormy weather reminds me of a certain seven-letter word. Each time you remove one letter, you have another common word; remove another letter, and you have another word. You don’t have even to rearrange the letters. It works all the way down until you’re left with one letter, which is also a word.” What is this seven-letter word?
10
.
“Did you know that I used to sell eggs?” asked Ol’ Jaybeard. “One day, I had a total of three customers. The first one said, ‘I would like to buy half of your eggs plus half an egg more.’ So I sold him the eggs. Then the second customer said, ‘I would like to buy half of your remaining eggs plus half an egg more.’ So I sold her the eggs. Then the third customer said, ‘I would like to buy half of your eggs plus half an egg more.’ ‘Perfect,’ I said. ‘That’s all I have left.’ How many eggs did I sell that day? And keep in mind that I didn’t have to break any of the eggs.”
The highest point in Florida, Britton Hill, is only 345 feet above sea level.
Strange tales of creatures great and small
.
D
OG GONE
“It was like something out of
The Wizard of Oz,
” said Agnes Tamas, whose dog was blown away by a storm in Gesztered, Hungary, in 2010. Tamas, 57, could see the roofs being ripped from nearby houses when she ran to her cellar. She’d hoped her dog would be safe, but to her horror, she watched as his doghouse was swept up into the air and blew out of sight—with the pooch still inside! After the storm passed, Tamas searched but could find no signs of her pet. A few days later, a man found the dog…20 miles away. Tamas was reunited with her dog, whom she renamed Lucky. The dog’s house, however, was never found.
CAT BURGLAR
Harry, a two-year-old Burmese cat, is notorious in his Five Dock, Australia, neighborhood for breaking into people’s homes and stealing underwear, gloves, bras, and anything else he can carry. But his favorite thing to steal is footwear. “Harry has a shoe fetish,” says his owner, Sue Pope.
CHEETAH SCENTS
Biologists have long known that big cats are attracted to cologne and perfume, so in 2010 they performed an experiment at the Bronx Zoo to find out which one the cats like the most. (The findings will help the scientists set scented remote camera traps.) Cheetahs were given several scents to smell, and the ferocious felines’ favorite fragrance: Calvin Klein’s Obsession for Men. According to zoo curator Pat Thomas, “The big cats would literally wrap their paws around a tree and just vigorously rub up and down. Sometimes they would start drooling, their eyes would half close, it was almost like they were going into a trance.”
GOAT TRIP
During a DUI checkpoint in Bedford County, Virginia, in June 2010, police nabbed four drunk drivers, one drug offender…and one goat. It was heard knocking around inside the trunk of a sedan driven by 32-year-old Fiona Ann Enderby, 32, of Washington, D.C. The officers were shocked to find the animal bound in ropes and panting heavily in the 94°F trunk. Enderby, however, didn’t see the problem with it. “I’m from the U.K.,” she explained. “And it is acceptable there to transport goats in this manner.” Enderby said she’d purchased the animal from a farmer; it was a present for the passengers in her car—four men from Kenya who live in Lynchburg, Virginia. Police gave the goat some water and had it transported to a shelter. Enderby was cited for animal cruelty. The four men never did get their goat.
Goofy’s original voice and laugh were provided by a circus clown named Pinto Colvig.
COW TALE
In August 2010, a Chinese farmer from Fuijan province named Sheng Hsueh noticed that one of his cows was missing. There was no trace of theft or foul play, which left him mystified. Four days later, some of Sheng’s neighbors started to hear mooing coming from the ground. Then, through an open manhole, the missing cow reared its head. Somehow, she had wandered off and gotten lost in the sewer system. Sheng retrieved her with a winch and some rope. “She didn’t seem upset by her ordeal,” said one villager. “As soon as they freed her, she found a patch of grass.”
BEAR LEFT
Campgrounds and national parks frequently offer metal food boxes that keep out hungry bears. One night in July 2010, a bear climbed into the Story family’s Toyota Corolla and went after a peanut butter sandwich that was left on the back seat. Except the Storys weren’t in a national park—they were in their home in Larkspur, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. Once the bear got in the car and had a snack, he took the car for a brief spin. To be fair, the bear wasn’t trying to steal the car—he just knocked the gear shift into neutral, sending the car down the Storys’ driveway and into a thicket of trees. That woke up the neighborhood. Animal control authorities were summoned to remove the bear, who couldn’t get out of the car. Ralph Story told reporters that the bear left “a nice pile” on the front seat as a parting gift.
Another cause of lightning: friction between ash particles from an erupting volcano.
Here’s a humor break courtesy of some of the world’s funniest comedians
.
“Bozo the Clown. Do we really need ‘the Clown’? Are we going to confuse him with Bozo the Tax Attorney? Or Bozo the Pope?”
—Jerry Seinfeld
“I must be going bald. It’s taking longer and longer to wash my face.”
—Harry Hill
“Studies reveal that rectal thermometers are the best way to take a baby’s temperature. Plus, it really shows them who’s boss.”
—Tina Fey
“I can’t swim. I can’t drive, either. I was going to learn to drive but then I thought, well, what if I crash into a lake?”
—Dylan Moran
“Woman don’t want to hear what you think. They want to hear what
they
think, in a deeper voice.”
—Bill Cosby
“Kissing is just pushing your lips against the sweet end of 66 feet of intestines.”
—Drew Carey
“Here’s some advice: At your next job interview, tell them you’re going to give 110%. Unless you’re applying for a statistician job.”
—Adam Gropman
“It’s one of life’s most memorable moments: the marriage proposal. I fantasize about it. Will he hire a plane to write, ‘Will you marry me?’ in the sky? And if I don’t want to marry him, do I have to hire a plane to write, ‘No’?”
—Rita Rudner
“I've always wanted to go to Switzerland to see what the army does with those red knives.”
—Billy Connolly
“My first job was selling doors, door to door. That was tough. Ding Dong. ‘Can I interest you in a…oh, you’ve got one already. Never mind.’”
—Bill Bailey
“I have a lot of growing up to do. I realized that the other day while sitting in my fort.”
—Zach Galifianakis
Chinese officials have smeared a bridge with butter to make it too slippery for suicidal people to climb up (and jump off).
Ever wonder where words come from? Here are some interesting stories
.
H
ECK
Meaning:
A mild exclamation of surprise or irritation
Origin:
“How much truth is there to the legend that Mark Twain invented this word to spare his wife from the godless word ‘hell’? None. The origin goes back several centuries to Lancashire, England. It either derives from
eck!,
an expression of surprise, or from the Lancashire imprecation
go to ecky,
meaning ‘go to hell.’” (From
A Browser’s Dictionary of Interjections,
by Mark Dunn)
PRUDE
Meaning:
One who is excessively concerned with being or appearing to be proper, modest, or righteous
Origin:
“Prude owes everything to
proud,
once upon a time the same word. It was clipped from Old French
prudefemme,
meaning a good and honorable woman, but ‘prude’ has long since declined into something critical and narrow.” (From
The Secret Lives of
Words,
by Paul West)
WIZARD
Meaning:
A man skilled in the occult; a magician
Origin:
“‘Wizard’ is formed from the adjective
wise
and the suffix
-ard
. The word originally meant a ‘wise man, philosopher.’ The suffix
-ard,
however, almost always has a pejorative or disparaging sense, as in the words ‘coward’ and ‘drunkard.’ ‘Wizard’ was therefore often used contemptuously to mean ‘a so-called wise man,’ and from this use it came to mean ‘sorcerer’ and ‘male witch.’” (From
Word Mysteries & Histories,
by the
American Heritage
dictionaries)
ACNE
Meaning:
A common skin condition characterized by pimples on the face, chest, and back
Origin:
“It is ironic that ‘acne,’ which represents a low point in many teenagers’ lives, comes from
acme,
‘the highest point.’ The
Greeks used
akme,
which literally meant ‘point,’ for referring to spots on the face, but when it came to be rendered into Latin it was mistranslated as
acne,
and the error has stuck.” (From
Dictionary of Word Origins
by John Ayto)
STYMIE
Meaning:
To hinder or thwart
Origin:
“Originally a golf term, dating from at least 1834, denoting a golf ball lying on the putting green blocking another player’s ball from the hole. The root of ‘stymie’ is thought to be the old Scots word
stymie,
meaning ‘person who sees poorly.’ The logic here may be that a ‘stymie’ ball blocked the other ball from clearly ‘seeing’ the hole. What is certain is that by around 1902 ‘stymie’ had come into general use in the ‘obstruct’ or ‘frustrate’ sense, and government agencies have been ‘stymieing’ their citizens ever since.” (From
The Word Detective,
by Evan Morris)
MOSEY
Meaning:
To stroll; walk as if not in a hurry
Origin:
“This American slang word may stem from a name given to Jewish street vendors in the 1820s eastern USA who used to walk slowly under the weight of their loads. A general pejorative name applied to all Jews at one time was Moses.” (From
Batty, Bloomers and Boycott,
by Rosie Boycott)
HUBBUB
Meaning:
A confused sound of many voices; uproar; tumult
Origin:
“It has often been remarked that the early Celtic inhabitants of Britain contributed very little to the stock of English words. This is no surprise, given the difficult relations between the Germanic and Celtic peoples of England and Ireland. It seems likely that a certain English contempt resides in the adoption of the word ‘hubbub’ from a Celtic source, which is probably related to
ub ub ubub,
a Scots Gaelic interjection expressing contempt, or to
abu,
an ancient Irish war cry. In any case, ‘hubbub’ was first recorded (1555) in the phrase ‘Irish hubbub’ and meant ‘the confused shouting of a crowd.’ ‘Hubbub’ was again used by the New England colonists as a term for a rambunctious game played by Native Americans.” (From
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
)
One of the most widely recognized scents in the world: baby powder.
